Video games are slowly transitioning from childish hobbies that should be done away with as someone gets older to an art form that has taken the US market by storm. Much has changed from the days where the most content a game contained was the movement of vertical, white pixels on a screen. Now, video games have the capacity to create compelling narratives and tell them in a way that engages the participants in ways books do. One such game is Bioshock Infinite. Told in the imaginary floating city of Columbia, it's the tale of a man looking for his daughter. With the words, "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt" on the forefront of his mind, he will do whatever it takes to complete this task. Critically acclaimed for its immersive setting …show more content…
As stated earlier, video games have transitioned into an art form. Art is an extension of the artist and their creativity. Their heart, soul, and being is present in the pieces they create. In the same way, video games are just an extension of those who create them. With this reasoning, we can assume that cultural attitudes will be present in various digital content they provide. Most game developers are males. (This highlights another issue which highlights the lack of gender diversity in certain career paths.) Therefore, the notion that many video games will be layered with attitudes that are geared toward the "stereotypical" male desires is not farfetched. Some of these desires include sexually clad women, minimal clothing, and robust body figures. (Salter & Blodgett, 2012) Now, this perpetuates a real-life narrative that reveals certain hegemonic ideologies concerning masculinity in the US. "According to Wood, masculinity themes are: don't be female; be successful; be aggressive; be sexual; and be self-reliant." (Allen, 2004) The problem is that video games do not create these themes; they are created within a cultural context and applied to different platforms to perpetuate them throughout society. In the world of Infinite, a few of these themes were clearly placed to fuel the male libido in a virtual
Jane Addams was a Progressive reformer and famous advocate for the settlement house movement. Addams mostly focused on improving social conditions for immigrants and for other residents of urban slums. Jane Addams’s health problem caused her to become famous reformer. In 1881 she travelled many medical schools. In one of her journey she took her friend Ellen Gates Starr with her. They visited well known Toynbee Hall in London. The purpose of Toynbee Hall was to reduce urban problems such as poverty. This visitation inspired them to create one settlement house in Chicago. In short term their dream became true. In 1889 they opened Hull House in the neighborhood of slums in Chicago. Hull House provided services for the poor immigrants in that
Kimmel looks at both sides of the argument that video games and other media influence violence in young men in real life, but focuses on the perception that violent video games influence violent young men. In my third informal writing assignment reflecting on that chapter, I stated “I can see the side where it does have an impact of young kids, and I see it in my younger cousins when they can recite the cutscenes in the games they play, and see it when they play fight and pretend they are their favorite game heroes”, concluding with “Today’s violent games weren’t made to teach children how to kill, they’re only made for entertainment” (Brinkman-Sull). Before I took this class, and even at the beginning of the semester, I was extremely defensive of the criticism on violence in gaming, but after reading more into it, I realized just how deep in the industry the problem is– highly sexist notions in a lot of popular games. Many of them portray women as objectified beings, purely used for sex appeal and to attract the larger male gamer population. The male characters are also idealised in a similar way– typically portrayed as muscular, brawny men, with basic levels of thinking and reasoning. These brawny men are typically focused on one thing– complete the mission in whatever means possible. This kind of violent thinking is widely reflected throughout many other typically male-dominated organizations, including the
Tom Bissell, in his essay, “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” has described video games and how they are unique and different from movies, books, or even interactive films. Bissell says “I came to accept that games were incompetent with almost every aspect of what I would call traditional narrative.” This is showing the readers that even though there is a plot and story line, as characters can control and alter the story line or outcome by what you do or see throughout the game.
Tough Guise provides a stunning look at the violent, sexist, and homophobic messages boys and young men usually receive from virtually every corner of the culture, from television, movies, video games, etc. What does it takes to become a “Real Man?” Boys and men show the world parts of themselves that others define as manly. My initial reaction to Jackson Katz’s, “Tough Guise: Violence, Manhood and American Culture,” movie is I truly believe that video games and movies are a big part of violence.
Focusing on the how of violence, is an article in which the author talks about what makes the violence in one game more meaningful than the other. He brings up two different most talked-about action games, BioShock Infinite and the Last of us and compares them both. Bioshock infinite tells stories of a man and young woman fighting through dangerous territory, killing dozens of nameless bad guys, while The Last of Us, tells a story about post-apocalyptic zombie survival game, which was more grisly and direct compare to Bioshock. He wonders why the violence of Bioshock Infinite made him feel gratuitous and not transformative or powerful. He felt that Bioshock infinite was more of an anonymous shooting that made it difficult for him to about anything
This text is published by a media company called Mic. Their target audience is young people and they cover a wide variety of subjects such as News, Arts, and Technology (Mic /about). The author of this article is Sophie Kleeman, who, according to her profile on Mic.com, covers the “intersection of tech and culture” (Mic /profiles/152573/sophie-kleeman)
In the majority of video games where women are present, many of them tend to have the same complexion as a Hispanic/Latino woman and they are wearing a minimal amount of clothing. These video games are played mostly by young teenage boys. They are being exposed to this kind of depiction of a Hispanic/Latino woman and while banning videogames altogether is not the answer, depicting woman differently could be an answer. According to J.R. Macnamara in his book Media and Male Identity: The Making and Remaking of Men, he says that “from the beginning of the twentieth century, sex and sexuality have been identified as fundamental elements of identity (6),” and when Hispanic/Latino women are highly sexualized in media, some men view Hispanic/Latino women in their everyday lives as “easy” and “desiring sex.” Media's portrayal of sex is usually fun, without consequences, with any girl a man wishes to engage in the act with. Because women are usually portrayed as a sex object for men, some young men have developed the mindset that women are just that, a sexual object to give men pleasure. The less clothing and more promiscuous and flirtation a woman is on television, for example, is portrayed, the easier of a target they seem to the man watching and this can manifest into their real life thoughts and actions. Many of these racy roles are played by Hispanic/Latino women. Rachel Bell, author of “Sexualization of
Shouldn’t this generation be required to play Pac-Man, Asteroids, Galaga, Centipede Pit Fall or Frogger before they get to play Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or Halo? The games these days have real life graphics and by some can be considered offensive and too graphic, having an (EC) early childhood to (AO) an adult only rating (Entertainment Software Rating Board). Games went from being a nice hobby to a young kid to the average gamer now being an average age of 34 years old. The popularity of game usage is detrimental to the American society, changing our nation to
Electronystagmography is a procedure used to look at involuntary rapid eye movement (nystagmus). Nystagmus is when your eyes move from side to side or up and down very rapidly without you making this happen. It is normal for this to occur in response to certain stimuli, such as changing head position. If nystagmus does not occur, this can indicate a problem with the inner ear or various parts of the brain. The procedure may be done to check for a tumor, an infection, a low blood supply, or other problems. Your health care provider may recommend this procedure to help determine the cause of vertigo, which is a sensation that you or your surroundings are moving when they are not.
On her YouTube channel, Anita Sarkeesian criticizes popular culture over how they choose to represent women and women’s issues in their content. Unexcused from this list is the massive amount of video games that have been coming out since the 1980’s. Specifically in a series of videos entitled “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” Sarkeesian identifies how different commonly used tropes, like the damsel in distress and the woman in the refrigerator negatively affect women in our society today. She argues these tropes objectify women and lead to problems in our perception of women in society. The tropes Sarkeesian identifies in her videos, specifically the damsel in distress and the women in the refrigerator, objectify women by reducing
For definition of the male gaze, this area of the exhibit will focus on Laura Mulvey’s “Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look.” In this piece, Mulvey discusses two theories: voyeurism and fetishistic scopophilia. To briefly explain, voyeurism involves deriving pleasure from the assertion of control, usually done by a male. On the other hand, fetishistic scopophilia transforms the female entity into an object whose sole purpose is to pleasure. An area of this exhibit include an arcade machine of the game “Mortal Kombat” to depict the difference in the way males and females are drawn and portrayed in video games. Male characters within this game are provided armor, or clothing at the least, that covers their vital organs and suits their fighting style. It is obvious the intention of the male characters’ clothing is functionality. However, the same can not be said about their female counterparts. Not only is their clothing minimal, their fighting style is also hypersexualized. This video game is almost the epitome of Mulvey’s fetishistic scopophilia. Next to this will be side-by-side showcasing of famous superhero costumes such as Wonder Woman vs. Superman and Catwoman vs. the Joker. Again, these costumes reinforce fetishistic scopophilia as female characters are purposely clothed with minimal armor that accentuates a female’s breasts and butt. Music videos are another reliable source for elaborating on fetishistic scopophilia. For instance, the popular rock band Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” reduces the band’s teacher to nothing but a sexual object to whom they sexually fantasize about instead of respect and learn from. Moreover, the famous “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne reduces the band’s friend’s mom to a sexual object for visual pleasure. The novel “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov will be used to further detail how males view women, even young teens, as subjects for their pleasure,
Throughout the world women are depicted to be oversexualized among forms of media such as video games and comic books. The idea of oversexualization towards female characters is that they have been often drawn and animated in hypersexual ways. Even going as far as viewing them as a sex object, their revealing body images are eye candy through the eyes of men. Hence women found in comic books and video games are frequently emphasized by their excessive physical appearances, objectification, portrayal, and character role.
Some video games teach children wrong values such as robbing, violence, adultery and vandalism to list a view that reward gamers for acting in these ways. Many video games are sexist there is usually no main female protagonist and woman are usually submissive and mistreated or are sexually
The portrayal of men and women in video games, as in other media, is a subject of research in gender studies. This topics is discuss in terms of sexism in video gaming. Especially, women are underrepresented or use as objectification in mainstream games. Women in video games are generally, as a rule of thumb, killed, raped, abused or rescued by the male heroes. This is extremely sad to see because the role of women in society is changing compare to ten years ago. Women has been proven themselves to be stronger and tough in different fields such as sports, politics, education but the representation hasn’t change.
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